NCI Signs 5-year Cooperative Agreement with Loreto Regional Government in Peru

05/03/2010

May 3, 2010 | In a sign of long-term sustainability, NCI and the Peruvian Program for Conservation, Management and Sustainable Use of Biological Diversity in the Region of Loreto (PROCREL) have signed a 5-year agreement. One of NCI’s most successful programs, PROCREL works to conserve the extraordinary biodiversity of Loreto – Peru’s largest department with 92 million acres of Amazon forest. The program has already helped to protect nearly 4.5 million acres of pristine forest in three newly declared Regional Conservation Areas (RCAs), and has also helped to improve the livelihood of the local people by developing a number of sustainable income generation programs.

During a festive opening ceremony, the Regional President, Mr. Ivan Vasquez, cut the ribbon of “Productive Conservation” auditorium and talked about the need of interiorizing the message of conservation. Sharing office space with the Regional President and the government’s Sustainable Forestry Program, we hope that NCI’s conservation values will become the norm. During the event, “Loreto, the rainforest and its people” was presented; this high quality coffee-table book features Loreto’s biological and cultural diversity, conservation areas, and the “productive conservation” model which has been successfully implemented in the Regional Conservation Areas.

Working together with NCI, the Regional President was also recently honored as a “world champion of water protection” for declaring the PROCREL Alto Nanay-Pintuyacu-Chambira RCA and for signing a historic ordinance protecting headwaters in Loreto. This ordinance is the first of its kind in South America and an important element in the strategy for protection of ecological processes in Loreto. The ordinance gives effective conservation measures to large areas of fragile ecosystems by restricting high impact activities.